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BLARGH.
So, yesterday evening, my computer froze in a wonderfully typical show of display driver croaking, which is annoying in itself, but of no lasting consequence.
Except that when I rebooted it, it didn't come back up. It froze right at boot with the exact same error message Caroline started getting on her own computer two days ago.
Sorry to all those of you I left mid-chat -- that's the reason why.
So both our computers are now out of order, with the same apparent symptoms, at nearly the same time. I would very, very much like to know how that's even possible.
Some further digging revealed that my computer is probably fine and I hope to fix it with a mere BIOS setting switch, but I would be really interested in figuring out just how the HELL that setting came to change on its own. (Caroline's, however, looks like a plain nearly-dead hard drive, and there's nothing you can do about that, alas.) But, in the meanwhile... Blargh.
My already floundering NaNoWriMo is, henceforth, real, real fucked.
I'm now two days late on the schedule, and given how much of a struggle it's been to only keep up, I don't know how I could catch up.
I painstakingly reached my own mini-goal two days ago, a wordcount half an order of magnitude smaller than the official 50,000 that I had set for myself at the beginning, as a more realistic goalpost for a busy lifestyle, although I can't say that has given me the sense of fulfillment I was hoping for. I think that having almost stayed on track with the minimal allowable daily wordcount has given me a feeling that I could actually almost do this, the whole write-a-novel-in-one-month-and-get-away-with-it marvelous insanity, which makes reaching the mini-goal feel like much less of an achievement.
Not that I was doing very well, though, even without the computer crash. Raking my brains for the mandatory ~1700 daily words had become increasingly grueling, and the writing was hollow and contrived and generally frustratingly bad. Besides, on Sunday, I made the mistake of diving into old folders and reading some stuff I wrote many years ago, for a fanzine I took part in back then. Reading all these again was something of both a shock and a cold shower.
They were good.
I don't know how to not make this sound trite. I mean: usually, when looking back on some of my past work in any field, my initial and primary urge is to torch it and forget it even existed. But this... How could I put it. The writing is not very smooth and at times clumsy, but still sharp and evocative. The characters are vibrant with an intense, complex life. The emotions I put in there still ring painfully true all those years later.
And I would write that, several days worth of WriMo, in one or two fevered sittings.
Nowadays, I struggle to come up with a small thousand hollow words.
What the hell happened to me? When did that well dry up and how can I bring it back to life?
Bummer. That hasn't helped either my motivation or my inspiration any.
Anyway. Computer troubles first, alas. I know I've got good techies among my kind readership, and I have two questions for you:
1) Can brief brown-outs damage hardware? Would a desktop UPS be a good idea?
2) What workable solutions for household backups (10GB at most, I'd say) exist?
Thanks loads.
But of course, in the meanwhile... Nothing to do but wait, evidently.
Except that when I rebooted it, it didn't come back up. It froze right at boot with the exact same error message Caroline started getting on her own computer two days ago.
Sorry to all those of you I left mid-chat -- that's the reason why.
So both our computers are now out of order, with the same apparent symptoms, at nearly the same time. I would very, very much like to know how that's even possible.
Some further digging revealed that my computer is probably fine and I hope to fix it with a mere BIOS setting switch, but I would be really interested in figuring out just how the HELL that setting came to change on its own. (Caroline's, however, looks like a plain nearly-dead hard drive, and there's nothing you can do about that, alas.) But, in the meanwhile... Blargh.
My already floundering NaNoWriMo is, henceforth, real, real fucked.
I'm now two days late on the schedule, and given how much of a struggle it's been to only keep up, I don't know how I could catch up.
I painstakingly reached my own mini-goal two days ago, a wordcount half an order of magnitude smaller than the official 50,000 that I had set for myself at the beginning, as a more realistic goalpost for a busy lifestyle, although I can't say that has given me the sense of fulfillment I was hoping for. I think that having almost stayed on track with the minimal allowable daily wordcount has given me a feeling that I could actually almost do this, the whole write-a-novel-in-one-month-and-get-away-with-it marvelous insanity, which makes reaching the mini-goal feel like much less of an achievement.
Not that I was doing very well, though, even without the computer crash. Raking my brains for the mandatory ~1700 daily words had become increasingly grueling, and the writing was hollow and contrived and generally frustratingly bad. Besides, on Sunday, I made the mistake of diving into old folders and reading some stuff I wrote many years ago, for a fanzine I took part in back then. Reading all these again was something of both a shock and a cold shower.
They were good.
I don't know how to not make this sound trite. I mean: usually, when looking back on some of my past work in any field, my initial and primary urge is to torch it and forget it even existed. But this... How could I put it. The writing is not very smooth and at times clumsy, but still sharp and evocative. The characters are vibrant with an intense, complex life. The emotions I put in there still ring painfully true all those years later.
And I would write that, several days worth of WriMo, in one or two fevered sittings.
Nowadays, I struggle to come up with a small thousand hollow words.
What the hell happened to me? When did that well dry up and how can I bring it back to life?
Bummer. That hasn't helped either my motivation or my inspiration any.
Anyway. Computer troubles first, alas. I know I've got good techies among my kind readership, and I have two questions for you:
1) Can brief brown-outs damage hardware? Would a desktop UPS be a good idea?
2) What workable solutions for household backups (10GB at most, I'd say) exist?
Thanks loads.
But of course, in the meanwhile... Nothing to do but wait, evidently.